Study 329 Continuation Phase

September 21, 2016 — Study 329 had an 8-week acute phase and a further 24 week continuation phase. After 8 weeks the participants had an option to enter a further continuation phase. The idea was to see how ongoing treatment shaped up. The continuation phase was never published. Never even talked about.

After publication of the Acute Phase rewrite in September 2015, the team began work on the Continuation Phase. We always expected to publish this in The International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine but it seemed like a good idea to send the Continuation Phase to JAACAP first, as the original Keller paper was published in JAACAP.

The former editor Mina Dulcan and the current editor Andres Martin and the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, whose journal this is, have been lobbied heavily from 2006 onwards by Leemon McHenry and Jon Jureidini, trying to get them to do the decent thing and retract the Keller paper. But in vain. We were pretty certain they would refuse the Continuation Phase. But they needed to be given the opportunity to dig a deeper hole. And they did.